phan·tom pains
/ˈfan(t)əm pāns/ – noun
The excruciating neural trauma that follows often violent disconnection from previous proxy bodies—invisible wounds that exists psychologically through healthy flesh like molten glass, plaguing victims with agonizing pain from deaths that never touched their current bodies.
The construction beam fell at 3:47 PM, crushing David Mitchell’s legs before the debris buried him alive.
His respawn was immediate—soul snapping back into his backup proxy with incredible force. Perfect body unused proxy — David can return back to work immediate…
But when David tried to stand, agony erupted through his bones like white-hot metal. He collapsed, screaming, clutching legs that had never been injured.
“This proxy’s defective,” David demanded at the SoulTech service center, gesturing at his perfectly sculpted but paralyzed legs. “I want a refund.”
The technician’s customer service smile never wavered. “Sir, our diagnostics show full functionality. But we’ll provide a temporary replacement while we run comprehensive tests.”
David tethered into the loaner—premium grade, factory fresh. The paralysis transferred instantly. “This one’s broken too!” he shouted at the increasingly nervous technician.
Desperate to get back to work, David accessed SoulTech’s proxy sharing network. Different manufacturer, different design, completely unblemished legs. Same result: new proxy, zero mobility….
“Sir,” the customer service rep said with practiced patience, “perhaps the issue isn’t with our proxies…”
THE EPIDEMIC MEDICINE CAN’T TOUCH
“Your mind experienced the trauma,” explains a neurologist in AetherPoint’s medical district. “Your mind and soul carries the memory. The pain doesn’t care which body you’re wearing—it follows you like a shadow.”
This is the hidden crisis sweeping through the digital afterlife economy. Every violent untethering leaves phantom scars burned into neural pathways. When your proxy dies, the pain comes home with you.
In grimy support groups, phantom pain sufferers share dark laughs between winces. Marcus, whose chest burns months after a proxy explosion. Sarah, whose arms refuse to function after her borrowed body was shredded by machinery. Elena, who feels constant drowning sensations.
“Molten glass flowing through your veins,” Elena describes the phantom drowning. “Your muscles remember being destroyed, refusing to believe they’re intact.”
Brain scans show normal function. Blood work comes back clean. Yet patients experience agony that should render them unconscious—burns where there’s perfect skin, shattered bones that scan clean, paralysis in limbs never injured.
THE SHADOW SOLUTION
Where medicine fails, AetherPoint’s underground provides hope. Modified pain patches operating on frequency levels offer the only effective relief.
“First patch took me from a 15 out of 10 to maybe a 7,” David explains, applying another device to unmarked legs. “For twenty minutes, the electric sting in my bones fade enough to remember what it feels like to be human.”
As tethering adoption explodes globally, phantom pain cases multiply exponentially. Emergency rooms report 400% increases in “undiagnosed neurological trauma” while SoulTech dismisses the crisis as “minor transitional discomfort.”
David sits in his fourth proxy this month, legs still paralyzed by memories of crushed bone. “At least SoulTech didn’t charge me restocking fees…”
